Facebook has begun to roll out its long-awaited timeline to its 800m-plus users. The timeline replaces a user's wall, and improves on a few aspects of a user's profile: namely a more accurate sense of time and a much more appealing aesthetic. And though it has taken a few more months than initially expected – likely due to its scale and the technological magic required to achieve it – I think most people will find it has been worth the wait.

The new timeline is basically just that: a reverse chronological history of all things you've done on Facebook (and increasingly anywhere on the web.) And it looks great. The recent hires of data artists such as Nicholas Felton have really paid off for Facebook with the new look.

There's a new place to put a banner image that stretches nicely across the top of your profile, replacing the often awkward vertical spot where most people used to put a photo of themselves. Worry not though, for those who like to do a l'il stalking, there is still a spot for a headshot, but it's smaller and not the dominant element at the top of the page. This is nice for those of us who would rather not blast a photo of themselves and would rather say, blast a photo of their cat (like I do). Though people much more creative than me have already come up with great ways to have fun with the new layout.

The profile page has also had a refresh. Instead of the old wall, which was like a slightly more attractive message board, the new profile is rooted around a vertical timeline with branches coming off either side that can be any number of things: a photo gallery, a post from a friend, a note about what you've recently liked, or a small widget showing what friends you added in the most recent month.

It also makes it really simple to jump back in time to a month ago, a year ago, or – amusingly – the day you were born. And even for somebody like me, who puts relatively little information on the service, it's fun to go back to notable dates (when you moved to a new city, when you first started a job, when you first started dating somebody) to see what things you were posting then.

What I like most about the new timeline is that it gives people a dash more creative freedom, leading to more interesting and appealing profile pages. We're not talking the kind of flexibility that MySpace had, thank goodness, but just a little more opportunity for users to add some of themselves to their Facebook. Apple has taken a similar approach with its iOS software, allowing some very basic customization (changing the wallpaper for instance) in a framework of exceptional design. This helps make us stay out of the design ghetto that MySpace became, while also allowing people to feel more invested.

For many people, Facebook has become increasingly important and personal to their lives, and they should have the opportunity to make it their own. And ultimately it's a win for both the users and for Facebook (which isn't always the case), as I'm sure this will lead to people spending even more time on the site doing two things: 1) extremely painstaking curation of their own timeline and 2) spending even more time browsing others' timelines.

While I'm sure that privacy concerns will again be raised (it's good people care about their privacy), the new timeline doesn't make any more of your content available, it just makes it easier to access. To help with this, Facebook has surfaced a key feature that was buried in previous versions of the site: the ability to view your timeline as another user.

This feature is very helpful in making your timeline look exactly how you want depending on who is looking at it. Combining lists with this feature, it's been pretty easy to make it so that people who are acquaintances do not get all of the updates that my close friends do.

And it's easy for me to check if any particular person is privy to more than I'd prefer.